ABN-Amro's Rebecca Wood is the newest of the analysts covering the Irish food industry, but her recent arrival hasn't stopped her speaking her mind in a refreshing fashion. Her critical comments this week about Greencore's management echo the comments regularly voiced in this column about the paucity of ideas at Greencore head office.

Greencore is inevitably compared to high-flying IAWS - and rightly so. Both began life as companies based solidly in agribusiness - fertiliser, flour and (in the case of Greencore) sugar and malt. Both have diversified into higher value consumer foods but with contrasting levels of success.

While more than 40 per cent of IAWS sales come from consumer foods - and a higher proportion following this week's acquisition of Green Isle's Pierre's business - Greencore has really only dipped its toe in the consumer market with the Paramount pizza in the UK. It is badly in need of a high quality acquisition to restore confidence in the management and put some respectability on Greencore's market ratings.

As Ms Wood commented this week, Greencore management's credibility is on the line and the group's next deal must be a good one providing both top-line momentum and shareholder value. No Imperial Holly-type fiascos, please.

For this column, one of the problems is that Greencore's top management - David Dilger, Kevin O'Sullivan and Ben Power - all come from a financial and accounting background. The board lacks a dedicated food industry professional such as Philip Lynch at IAWS and Jim Murphy at Golden Vale, people who have been immersed in their industry for years and have been prepared to move aggressively into higher margin businesses.

Both Greencore and IAWS have dismissed the idea of the two groups merging and, certainly from Greencore's point of view, the ratings gap would make it extraordinarily difficult to agree terms.

An IAWS earnings multiple of 20 against Greencore's seven is an indication of the difficulty there would be in coming to an agreed valuation for Greencore shares.

Greencore - which includes many Irish business bluebloods on its board - has tried share buy-backs (inevitably a sign of a management without alternative ideas for its money), expansion into the US sugar industry (an unmitigated and expensive disaster) and a tentative expansion into the pizza business (a success).

But it has shown itself to be cautious and conservative and without the spark to make the aggressive move needed to move the shares out of their current torpor.

One good decision the board did make was to rebuff the approach from Fyffes when the Fyffes share was trading at an unreal level as a result of dot.com hype. Given the collapse in the Fyffes share, that, at least, was a sensible decision.

At this stage, it's difficult to see where a recovery is going to come from for the group's shareholders. The shares simply are not going to move to a reasonable rating until the market believes management is capable of producing growth. A merger with IAWS seems unlikely, while a merger with Golden Vale (minus its dairy business) could only be contemplated if it were Jim Murphy who ran the combined business.

Time for Dermot Desmond - nursing unaccustomed losses from his stake-building in Greencore - to make a move? It's going to need some stimulus from somebody to rescue Greencore shareholders from the mire.